Hitherto, a hand movement correcting mechanism that is described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-41419 (Patent Document 1) has been available as a technology in such a field. The hand movement correcting mechanism includes a fixing member that is fixed to a body of an image pickup apparatus, a movable member for holding a lens barrel, an actuator for applying rotational force to the movable member, and position detecting means for detecting the position of the movable member. For indicating the position of the movable member, a first reference axis and a second reference axis that are orthogonal to each other in a plane that is orthogonal to an optical axis of the lens barrel are set in the hand movement correcting mechanism.
The movable member rotates around the first reference axis and the second reference axis. In order to detect the position of the movable member by these rotations, the position detecting means includes a first position sensor for detecting a position of the movable member with respect to the first reference axis and a second position sensor for detecting a position of the movable member with respect to the second reference axis. On the basis of the positions of the movable member detected by the first and second position sensors, a control signal is generated and output to the actuator. This causes the lens barrel held by the movable member to move, so that distortion in an image that is formed on a surface of an image pickup element can be suppressed.
However, since the movable member that is described in Patent Document 1 rotates around the first reference axis and the second reference axis, the first position sensor, which is not intended for detecting the position of the movable member with respect to the second reference axis, may also detect the position of the movable member with respect to the second reference axis, in addition to the position of the movable member with respect to the first reference axis. Therefore, the first position sensor, which is not intended for detecting the position of the movable member with respect to the second reference axis, may output an output signal that includes a signal indicating that the position of the movable member with respect to the second reference axis has been detected. Consequently, the precision with which a distortion of an image caused by, for example, hand movement, is corrected is reduced because the correction is based on such an output signal.